CBT: Session Two ‘I Can’t Be Bothered Doing Anything’

Lack of enthusiasm is something I am really struggling with at present.  I struggled to get out of bed this morning at 9:30am.  I got into bed at 22:30 last night.  That's eleven hours lying down.  So why am I so tired when I get up?  Last night's CBT session told me to set myself a 'bed time' and a 'get up time', but seeing as I don't start work until 11am at present, the temptation to stay in bed that little bit longer is just too strong.

The vivid dreams make sleep feel less restful.  Last night I dreamt I discovered my childhood Wendy-house had burned down.  It was intense.

I need to do more with my conscious time.  Binge-watching TV shows is not a good use of my time.  And I'm a bad influence on my mum.  This must stop.  I have so many books to read.  I have a reputation as a bookworm, but I struggle to focus long enough to read a chapter.

Upside: I haven't had a headache in two days - that's progress!

Hot Soup Headache

Imagine, if you will, your head is a bowl filled with thick, boiling soup. If you move your head too fast, hot soup will come sloshing out of ears and eyes and nose and mouth and ooze into a sticky mess... now imagine feeling like that for four days.

Thankfully, the soup has now cooled and there is no more sloshing, but the intensity of the heat has seared itself into my skull, like a second-degree burn. People have tried to hold conversations with me, but it was such hard work to wade into the soup to search for words and it took so much energy to pull those words out of the soup, that I found it easier to just keep quiet. By the time any words reached my mouth, they were irrelevant anyway.

Is this the depression, or the headache?

CBT: Session One ‘Why Do I Feel So Bad?’

I’ve been off work for four months with various neurological symptoms and have been diagnosed with ‘chronic migraines’, for which I am now on beta-blockers. Having sat at home for four months, it seems I now also have depression, for which I have just started Sertraline and have been enrolled in an eight week group course of cognitive behavioural therapy. I had my first session this evening.

It wasn’t exactly what I expected. One of the group actually said, “I expected it to be like Alcoholics Anonymous’” but instead, it was twelve people sitting in two rows, in front of a PowerPoint presentation. We had one exercise in partners, otherwise we were just talked at and asked general questions. There was no ‘sharing’. CBT is about thoughts and behaviour rather than emotions, which is a relief because I was worried I would get too emotional.

I read through one of the books when I got home. I will look at  the exercises tomorrow. It seems like  Terry Pratchett’s concept of second and third thoughts - thinking about how I’m thinking about what I’m thinking. It makes sense. I just hope I can put it into practice. I will have a chance tomorrow as I have an *informal* meeting with my boss and HR to discuss returning to work. I am terrified, but I need to get back into a routine.

Maybe blogging about it will help. Who knows.